Respect for the traffic blockers

17-year-old Renana Mermelstein can't decide whether or not to support road blocking protesters

By Renana Marmelstein|Published: 05.31.05 , 18:41

In the middle of studying for one of my matriculation exams last week, two girls knocked on my door and introduced themselves as students from the girls yeshiva in Maaleh Levona.

They moved here this week, to study and to work.

Anyway, they asked me to sign a petition supporting the road blockers. I thought a lot about whether to sign it or not.

Would it really help anything? Obstructing traffic only makes people hate us more.

Then again, if people put themselves out this much for it, maybe there's something to it.

Then, on Shabbat I read something on Katif.net I believe everyone should read:

The kids who are shutting down your roads were supposed to knock on your doors politely, to try to convince you to vote against the disengagement plan in a national referendum; but you never gave them a chance to speak nicely, so they came to meet you here on the street.

They are good kids, believe me, I know them well. They don't drink, don't smoke, and only know violence from the movies they see once in a long while.

They don't stab each other in nightclubs on Friday nights; don't throw rocks at buses of soccer teams they don't like. And now they are sitting in jail, but not because they raised a hand at any police officer.

At the end of the day, they wanted to halt the daily flow of life. When the foreign minister of Zimbabwe comes to visit, his motorcade also blocks streets around Jerusalem.

When the Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team wins yet another championship, the city stops.

So, too, when the country is about to uproot a whole group of its citizens from their homes, the traffic can stop for a few minutes.

Of course, it is true, in this struggle, just like on the road, that one must not be right, but wise, and it is not at all clear that blocking traffic wins us a lot of public relations points.

It is also true that it would be preferable to find more creative, and less obstructive ways to protest. But we are not having a constructive discussion over a nice cup of coffee. You are frustrated because you want to get home, and you are unable to hear my rational arguments and explanations.

At the same time, these kids have also lost their patience, and they are unable to hear your lectures and mine.

When they block your traffic, you react from the gut. But in recent months, these kids have had so much blocked that they have also lost the ability to use their heads, and have started to react from the gut.

You are angry because they blocked your traffic. They are angry because their mouths were shut (Eliashiv Reichler, Gush.net).

I think that if you were in favor of the disengagement and got stuck in traffic because of a protest, rather than get angry you would respect the protesters for being prepared to sacrifice so much for their beliefs.

I challenge you to show me one person in favor of the disengagement who'd be willing to sit even one day in jail to support his views.

So, how about a bit of respect, a bit of understanding. Take a half-hour to think. You want to give the enemy a bit of our land? People here have been fighting for their homes for a year-and-a-half already, have been living without any routine, and you're whining about a traffic jam?

So a little support for the folks here, and what we're going through. Regardless of your political views.

Afterthought: During the last demonstration, we saw how the cops function. They had trouble containing 1,000 people. What's going to happen when the eviction orders come down (God forbid)?